Adventures of a bicycle commuter in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

When Does a Rain Jacket Make You Wet?

Currently i just have one cycling jacket, a Pearl Izumi Slice. But this morning I found myself kind of wet and kind of chilled wearing it. This is for two reasons. The first is while the jacket is breathable, you can still generate enough heat inside of it to sweat. Then the base layer shirt I wore this morning is too loose. It gets sweat on it but does not stay right against my skin. That lets it get cold and then contact the skin again making me cold.

All this on a day with no rain, so I really didn't need the rain jacket, but I don't have anything else to block the wind that was anymore breathable. I am keeping an eye out for a wind block jacket. The pants I wear in the cold weather have wind block on the front and much more breathable fabric on the back. This seems to work very well and the range of temperatures wearing just these (well I wear padded bike underwear with them) is great. They are warm enough if the temperature starts in the high 20s and still comfortable if it goes up into the 60s. I have worn them as low as 15 degrees with long underwear under them.

I don't expect a jacket to give that wide of temperature range, but if you know of a good jacket that works from around 30 to 45 degrees deepening on what you wear under it, I would love to hear about it. In the meantime I will check the end of season sales at the local shops.